Define slash...

[Nanaea]

I work under the impression that "slash" means male/male homosexual pairings. The term "slash" coming from the "/" itself and dating back to the first ST Kirk/Spock fanfics. The female versions would be "femslash." I have never heard it used in the sense of changing a cannon characters orientation.

[Guest Melody Fate]

I work under the impression that "slash" means male/male homosexual pairings. The term "slash" coming from the "/" itself and dating back to the first ST Kirk/Spock fanfics. The female versions would be "femslash." I have never heard it used in the sense of changing a cannon characters orientation.

I know it's called slash because of the /. But the way I was told when I was writing paper zines is that it also meant as a "warning" to the unsusupecting.

For example, if I wanted to write a hot "Kirk does it with a beautiful Orion slave girl, all I'd have to write is the rating, so people knew how descriptive it got. I wouldn't have to write M/F because back then, that was the norm.

If I wanted to write a story where Kirk and Spock have sex, then I have to write Kirk/Spock, because I must warn people that this is a pairng that will most likely offend (and yes, back then same sex pairings often did offend and it was considered not justpolite to warn folks, but necessary if you didn't want to find your name and reputation smeered about fandom like steped on dog poop.) If you wanted to have Spock having sex with strange men, you wrote M/M, again to warn the reader that these were stories that went outside the normal conventions.

Of course, back then too, slash was pretty much always homosexual, because pretty much everyone in any fandom was hetero in canon. So yeah, to a lot of folks it got to mean M/M and F/F and I suppose they're interchangeable, but most of the people who I worked with making paper zines, still will tell you that "Slash" means that they've changed the sexual orientation of the characters. Back when slash was not the norm and being homosexual was almost considered a crime, the writers of slash often were proud of who they were, that they broke away from tradition. Slash meant going outside of the norm of the fandom. Now that fandoms actually do exist with openly homosexual characters, that would mean that to write Brokeback Mountain or Queer Eye slash would be to make many of the characters hetero.

[Nanaea]

I know it's called slash because of the /. But the way I was told when I was writing paper zines is that it also meant as a "warning" to the unsusupecting.

I figured most would know that but I thought I'd throw it in just in case.

If anyone's curious, this is where I got my info: Slash Fiction: Wikipedia

[Guest Melody Fate]

Exactly. Check out the An ambiguous definition section. That pretty much claims what I was taught and as I implied, I'm very old school. (the moment anyone says "I was raised on paper zines, you know they're old school!) I was actually surprised, because I've found Wika to be extremely good at saying that opinions are facts, especially when it comes to something with fandom, where we don't really have hard, fast, rules.

Yes, I admit, the explanation has become a little blurred (as Wika pointed out) because of canon including homosexual relationships, but at least to me and others the "Out of the norm" definition still stands. No matter what, most people consider slash to be breaking away from canon. If the original creator made the characters homosexual, why is it "slash" to continue to keep them that way?

Slash started out as and is still looked at as something besides the fandom's mainstream. I don't know about you, but if I created a fandom where the main characters were homosexual, and people started writing about them being homosexual, but implied that was out of the norm, I'd be insulted. I'd take that to mean, "You're telling me that I didn't make them correctly homosexual, and you will now correct that."

Yes, I know, there is supposed "original slash" but that's just a misuse of lable. If you create something that is entirely your own, then how can it break away from canon?

If you want to go strictly on the / definition, then any relationship could be described as slash. If you write M/F, you've got the slash in there.

Slash always has implied a separate gendre of fanfiction. If M/M or F/F is normal for members of something canon, then why would you single out what is normal and say, "See? It's slash!" I would assume most people would walk into Brokeback Mountain fanfic fully expecting the main characters to be gay To say, "I wrote slash Brokeback Mountain fanfiction!" where the main characters are seen as homosexual is... well, it's just wrong. They were created to be gay. How does it break away from the norm to keep them the same way the creator intended them to be?

[Nanaea]

But what does the casual fanfic reader think slash means? That's where the problems arise. (Maybe we should make a poll?)

If slash means strictly m/m pairings, whether it's supported by cannon or not, to one reader and any pairing that goes against cannon to another reader, then what good is it if I warn readers at the beginning of my chapter that it contains "slash." Absolutely nothing! So why even bother? I think using M/M or M/F or F/F or whatever is better as far as warnings go, throw in an 'anal' warning with M/M and they'd have to be an idiot to not get it whether they call it slash or just plain trash.

BTW: I went to look at the AFF Story Code definitions and I didn't see "slash" anywhere. It's possible that I overlooked it, I suppose.

[redsliver]

BTW: I went to look at the AFF Story Code definitions and I didn't see "slash" anywhere. It's possible that I overlooked it, I suppose.

There are fewer story codes since the site went down and returned. Slash was there beforehand but I hadn't used it so I don't know quite what definition was with it.

[StoryJunkie]

Hm. I've written here for about a year now, so I'm pretty comfortable with WTF and LOL and just figuring out ROFL. Believe it. I'm really really stupid with these damn anachronisms. They drive me up a wall. Or someone will tell me, well, that means two guys. How can "gay sex" somehow ever come to mean "slash"? and yes, I read it all and learned very quickly, but you know, all this computerese is really a big learning curve for some people who aren't computer-literate. It's like a whole new language. It's stupid. Call a spade a spade. "This story contains gay sex". Call it GS. This never made sense to me. Calling it slash just sounded...well, really painful and bloody.